Lawrence O'Bryan Branch

Lawrence O'Bryan Branch (28 November 1820-17 September 1862) was a member of the US House of Representatives (D) from North Carolina's 4th congressional district from 1855 to 1861, succeeding Sion H. Rogers, and a Brigadier-General of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.

Biography
Lawrence O'Bryan Branch was born in Enfield, North Carolina in 1820, the nephew of state governor and US Secretary of the Navy John Branch. He was tutored by Salmon P. Chase in Washington DC, and he became a lawyer in Florida in 1840, fighting in the Seminole wars in Florida as a US Army soldier. In 1852, he became President of the Raleigh & Gaston Railroad Company back in North Carolina, and he served in the US House of Representatives as a Democratic Party member. On 2 December 1860, he was nominated to be Secretary of the Treasury by President James Buchanan, but he declined the position. In 1861, he became a colonel of the North Carolina militia at the start of the American Civil War, and he became a Brigadier-General of the Confederate States Army in January 1862. Branch's brigade fought at New Bern, Hanover Courthouse, the Seven Days Battles, Cedar Mountain, Second Bull Run, Chantilly, and Harpers Ferry, and he led his troops from Harpers Ferry, West Virginia to Sharpsburg, Maryland when the Battle of Antietam began in September 1862. Branch was shot through the right cheek and out of the ear by a Union sharpshooter while talking with Maxcy Gregg, William Dorsey Pender, James J. Archer, A.P. Hill, and Robert E. Lee, killing him.